— a national facility for preserving and distributing oceanographic and marine data.

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

Historical sea level data now available

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) announces the availability of historical sea level data from charts and ledgers, made possible with funding from the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN), matched by BODC funds.

BODC was in possession of several large historic sea level datasets in the form of scanned images of tide gauge charts and ledgers. These images have been added to the National Oceanographic Database (NODB) and are now freely available to registered users (subject to a licence agreement).

These scanned images are from eight tide gauge sites around the UK. The ledgers for Sheerness contain some of the earliest records (1870 onwards) of sea level data in the UK. Other ledgers came from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, and include several sites around Liverpool. The tide gauge charts are from Belfast.

Long-term sea level records have a wide range of scientific and practical applications. They are important to climate change studies (to give an indication of sea level rise), operational oceanography (looking at storm surges and tides) and civil engineering (flood defences) amongst others.

About BODC

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is a national facility for
preserving and distributing oceanographic and marine data. Staff have
direct experience of marine data collection and analysis and they work
alongside information technology specialists to ensure that the
biological, chemical, physical and geophysical data handled are
documented and stored for current and future use.